Rules

You are mek, a tiny mech seen from above, alone in a facility under the glass the old arena floated on. The lift only goes down. A run is three sectors of four floors, the core at the bottom of the twelfth, and the job is to put it out. Every floor is a row of bare rooms. Walk into one and its gates seal and drones land; clear them and the gates open; the last room of a floor asks something more of you, and then hatches open onto the next. Your hull going ends the run, and whatever salvage you carried out goes to the bank in the hangar, where it buys guns, perks and deeper drops for the next one. Dying is progress.

How to drive the mech is in the manual.

The sectors

• intake, floors 1 to 4, cyan. Grunts and scouts, turrets from floor 2, chargers from floor 3. Floor 4 is the lockdown.
• foundry, floors 5 to 8, orange. Shieldbearers and mortars join, carriers from floor 7, the odd elite from floor 6. Floor 8 is the sweep.
• core, floors 9 to 12, magenta. Snipers, and an elite in most waves. Floor 12 is the core.

Every floor down, the quiet between the drones' turns is shorter than the last (each floor keeps 86% of it, never under a third of floor one's), and from floor 5 two drones take their turn at once. The drones themselves never get tougher; the pace does.

A floor

Two or three rooms side by side, joined by corridors with a gate at each end, the camera framing the room you are in. The first room is live from the start. A fight room lands two waves (a third one time in three) and clears when the last drone is down; a cleared room heals 10 hull. The objective room, the last one on most floors, never runs out of drones: a pair at a time, for as long as the job takes. A gun waits by its door. Finishing the job clears the room.

Every drone obeys the turn. One drone (two from floor 5) does its thing, then the whole room is quiet for a beat. The gap is the hole you move through, and a drone's special is always its turn: nothing hurts you outside one except contact.

The floor done, you are paid 5 salvage a floor, and after a beat the hatches open.

Hatches and plans

Two or three rings open across the last room's right half, each with a name and a line under it saying what the next floor will be. Step off the spot they opened on, then walk onto one. The label is a promise:

• standard (three rooms): fight, fight, objective.
• armory (gun on the floor): a gun lies on the floor of the first room, no fight there; then a fight and an objective.
• elite (elite drones, 2 perks, double salvage; from floor 2): every drone is an elite, every kill pays double, and the hatch out gives two perk picks instead of one.

Floors 3, 7 and 11 open a single hatch named for the floor below, lockdown, the sweep, the core, with the job on its second line. Floors 4 and 8 open a single hatch into the next sector.

Perks

Taking a hatch opens a pick: three perks, keys 1 2 3, a click, or the pad. The game holds while it is open. Perks stack, most of them twice, and last the run. None of them touch the walk, the dash or the aim. Seven are in the pool from the first run; the rest are bought in the hangar.

• deep magazine: picked-up guns carry half again as much ammo
• long burst: the charge lasts a third longer
• fast refill: the charge comes back faster
• hard shield: shield +20
• plating: hull +15, and 15 back now
• kill refill: a kill puts a quarter back on the charge
• scrapper: half again as much salvage
• quick regen (80): the shield waits two seconds less before it comes back
• field repair (80): ten more hull back for every room cleared
• piercing rounds (150): your rounds go through one drone
• ricochet (150): your rounds bounce off a wall once
• double salvo (120): missiles fire one more per salvo
• overdrive on clear (100): four seconds of overdrive when a room clears
• dash mine (120): a dash leaves a mine behind you; it bursts on a drone
• demolition (80): nodes, switches and emitters take double
• lucky (100): drones drop twice as often
• second wind (200): once a run, a lethal hit leaves you on one hull with three seconds of shield
• hot start (120): every room opens with three seconds of overdrive
• hard shell (150): the first hit in every room does nothing
• magnet (80): salvage and drops come to you from across the room

Objectives

The objective room's job, drawn so a floor never repeats the last floor's. Drones keep landing the whole time: every one of these is done while dodging.

• nodes: three power nodes stand in the room. Shoot them down (100 hull each; a missile's burst counts).
• hold: a ring in the middle of the room. Stand in it until it fills, ten seconds; step out and it drains at half the speed it filled.
• switches: four switches, one lit at a time. Shoot the lit one. Hit an unlit one and the chain resets to the start.
• upload: three terminals on the walls. Stand at each for three seconds, in any order; walk away early and that terminal's upload is lost.

The job done pays 10 salvage a sector (10, 20, 30). The last room of floors 4, 8 and 12 is the sector's set-piece instead, the full width of the floor:

• lockdown (floor 4): the gates seal and a 45 second clock runs on the HUD. A pair of drones lands every six seconds whatever is still alive, up to six in the room at once. There is nothing to shoot for: survive the clock. When it runs out the lockdown lifts and whatever is left goes down with it.
• the sweep (floor 8): an emitter on the top wall and one on the bottom, 150 hull each, each driving a beam across the room, the top one left to right, the bottom one right to left. A beam shows faint for most of a second, then burns for two and a half, then goes dark for one and a half, and only moves while it is lit. A live beam on you is 14 on contact and 14 again every half second you stay in it. Cross behind a beam, or through a dark one. Shoot both emitters down while drones keep landing.
• the core (floor 12): the core disc in the middle of the biggest room, solid to you and to every round, six nodes round it. The nodes light in opposite pairs and only the lit pair takes damage; a pair down lights the next after a beat. The core sweeps one beam round the room on the same faint, live, dark cycle, and it turns faster with every pair down. All six down and the core goes dark.

Drones

Every drone shows its special before it can land: at least half a second of telegraph, every time. Read the shape, move through the gap.

• grunt: the standard drone. Twin guns, fat slow rounds you can step off. One round is a third of your shield.
• scout: small and quick, a light spray. A round is a sixth of the shield; there are more of them.
• turret (floor 2 on): static and thick, three grunts' worth of hull. Its turn draws an arc, then sweeps fat rounds through half a circle across you. The sweep starts a quarter turn off you, so the first round that can land is most of a second in. Walk through the gap behind the sweep.
• charger (floor 3 on): draws a line through where you stand, holds it for half a second, then dashes down it. The line is the warning: step off it. Contact hurts and shoves; a wall stops the charger dead. Off its turn it is a slow hunter.
• shieldbearer (foundry on): an arc of shield across its front stops your rounds, and it turns to face you. Its turn drops the shield to fire its twin guns: that is your window, or flank it.
• mortar (foundry on): keeps its distance. Its turn lobs two shells, half a second apart, onto where you are going. Each is a ring on the floor that closes over most of a second and then bursts, with a shove. Change direction.
• carrier (floor 7 on): wide and slow, four grunts' worth of hull, no guns. It crawls to the middle of the room and holds; its turn drops two motes beside it.
• mote: tiny and fast, no guns. It rams, one hit at a time with a beat between.
• sniper (core on): backs off and stands far, drifting a little. Its turn is a thin line that follows you for just over half a second, then one fast round down the line. The line stops following just before the shot: move after it locks.
• elite: any kind with twice the hull, a ring round it and guns that cycle faster. Worth 8 salvage. The odd one from floor 6, most waves from floor 9, every drone on an elite floor.

Your mech

• Hull 40, shield 60. The shield takes every hit first and comes back on its own after five seconds unhurt. The hull does not: it carries from room to room within a floor and refills at the hatch, so a cleared room's 10, the plating perks and a repair pickup matter inside the floor.
• Your guns fire charged bursts. A full charge is 1.1 seconds of fire. Let go before it runs out and it comes straight back; run it dry and the guns go silent and stay locked until the charge is back to 40%. Rest the guns to charge them.
• A picked-up gun replaces yours until its magazine is spent, then your own come back. Every gun goes exactly where the ring is. Picking the same gun up again refills it.
• The dash (shift) is a short burst of speed along the way you are walking. No meter.
• One downed drone in five leaves something: a gun from the pool, a repair while your hull is hurt, a shield that lets nothing through for eight seconds, or twelve seconds of overdrive (your guns cycle twice as fast). Never more than two lie about at once.

Guns

Gatling and missiles are in the pool from the start; the rest are bought in the hangar. The pool is what the armory floors and the drops draw from.

• gatling: a hose at twice your rate, light rounds, 200 of them.
• missiles: slow, they seek the nearest drone and burst where they land. 14. Stand clear: a burst at your feet hurts you.
• rail (120): one heavy round that goes straight through every hull on its line. Half a second a shot, 20 of them.
• shotgun (100): seven rounds in a fan, short. Close in and all seven land; one pull is one of 24.
• laser (150): a beam. Hold it on a hull and it never misses; it drains while the trigger is held, twelve seconds of it.
• mortar (150): a lobbed round that flies to the ring and bursts there, a big burst. The burst hurts you too. 10.
• turret (200): drops a sentry turret at the ring that fires at the nearest drone it can see for twenty seconds. Two charges; a third turret folds the oldest.
• flak (120): rounds that burst into six fragments on a hull or at range. Fire it past a drone and the fragments find it.

Salvage and the hangar

A downed drone drops salvage motes, one to three (the thick kinds two to four, an elite eight), which drift to you when you come near. The job done, the floor cleared and an elite floor pay more. The HUD shows what you carry. When the run ends, whatever you carry goes to the bank, and the hangar, on the title screen, spends the bank:

• guns: rail 120, shotgun 100, laser 150, mortar 150, turret 200, flak 120
• perks: the thirteen not in the starting pool, 80 to 200 each (the list above)
• drops: start a run from the foundry (300, once a run from the top has reached floor 5) or the core (500, floor 9). DROP AT picks where the next run starts. A run started lower keeps no floor record.

The hangar also keeps your records: deepest floor, wins, fastest win, runs, kills, and the deepest endless floor. The title screen shows the best floor and the wins. All of it is saved in this browser only.

Leaving and coming back

A run is saved at the start of every floor: the floor and its plan, your perks, the gun you carry and its ammo, your hull, the salvage, the clock. Close the tab and the title shows CONTINUE, which puts you back at the start of that floor; PLAY starts a fresh run and discards the saved one. Your hull going, or the win, clears it.

The end of a run

Your hull goes: the run card. The floor, the drones down, the salvage out, the clock, and any record that fell. Fire to go again from the floor your DROP AT says. The salvage is banked either way.

The core goes dark: the win card, the clock, and the facility's last line. Fire to continue down: the floors past the twelfth are endless, the core sector's rooms again with their names numbered, the same hatches and picks, the pace still climbing. The deepest endless floor is its own record.